church tagged posts

Friday we got a train from Barcelona to Nonaspe where a part of the group stayed camping. As i didn’t have a tend I continued with two more friends to sleep in a hostel in Caspe (Aragon). Next morning we got the first train back. We got together with the group at Nonaspe train station to start the tour organized by Abert (Gata and amics de la bici). We biked towards Batea where we stopped to visit the village, the small streets, the church… We had a break, a snack before lunch. From there we continued to Caseres. We stopped a few times. Once to fix the chain of a girl’s bike. Then to look at the map, we were a little lost. Since we had to go up many times, my knee started hurting. I had already felt some pain on my last bike tour…

When we get to Caseres stated raining so we had a long lunch break. The way from there was beautiful, many fruit trees. By then, I couldn’t enjoy the tour anymore, my knee was hurting a lot. I couldn’t move it...

Once again I arrived in a new country with sore throat. Since I was really tired I decided to sleep the whole morning. In the afternoon I left the hostel to see the city. My lunch costed 7 millions, I realized it would be difficult to get used with the amount of zeros on the Turkish lira bills. The waiter told me to be careful in order to not be cheated. He said it is common to trick tourists that aren’t used with the money. I asked if I should be careful with him. He answered: “NO, not me. I’m talking about the others. I’m honest”.

I visited the Aya Sofia, a church constructed in 532 and during years it was the biggest in the world. There were times that its mosaics were covered because the Islamism prohibited the images. Today it works as a museum. The place is impressive…

After I went to see the Blue Mosque, a mosque constructed in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its towers and domes made it the most famous one in Istanbul. The tourists enter through the side door...

I arrived in the train station by the end of the afternoon, it was like getting downtown São Paulo. I went to the underground part trying to find a place to get money. There, it was dirty. There were street sellers everywhere, lots of people in a hurry, others observing, a little suspicious for me. The police was agitated, I think something had happened, because they were walking from one side to another, unquiet. I went to the closest hostel I could find. It was a little messy and dirty. I was tired to try to find another place, so I stayed there.

Next day, it was cloudy and raining. I walked all over town, for about 6 hours. I started in “Pest”, the cathedral, opera, commercial town. Then I crossed one of the bridges to “Buda” and walked by the river. I visited some Turkish bathes. The city seamed to be beautiful but it had no glitter, it was opaque. Maybe because it was raining and the days were gray...

The arrival in Berlin was great. The first day I met a friend, Pepe, and we went to the park. It was a Sunday picnic in the Tierganden park with his English, Australian, American, Bolivian friends… There was no Germans though.

Then we waked to the Reichstag to have a general view of the city. It impressed me the amount of cranes, sometimes I would count 5 or 8 cranes together. Yes, we can see that Berlin is a city on construction. I pointed to my friend all the cranes and construction sites, he wasn’t so impressed. I think when people live there they get so used to see construction that they get indifferent to the amount of it.

We walked on the Unter den Linben avenue to the Berliner Dom and the museums island. The city was quiet. It was Sunday and there wasn’t many people on the streets. A strange feeling, wide streets with large buildings: an emptiness.

Here I also liked the subway. The stations are well decorated with marble, statues and huge lamps. The escalators are not so big and deep as the ones in St. Petersburg.

My first day I went straight to see the Red Square. It shouldn’t be called red square, its name comes from a word from old Russian that means beautiful. Nowadays this word also means red, it is why the square started to be called red.

I stopped I few subway stations away and I went walking. As much as I walked more I was surprised by the amount of shops. I can’t think of a clothing or sport brand that there is no a shop in Moscow. Streets, trains, underground passages are loaded with advertising. I really didn’t expect that much. I believe they are a lot more capitalists than we are. The scary part is that they stared not so long ago. It is sad to see it…

Next day I visited the Kremlin. I had problems to get in with photographic equipment. They didn’t let me go in with my equipment backpack...

I decided to do a tour to the Quebrada de Humahuaca. We left early in the morning. It was cold and foggy. After a 2 hour trip, we got at Pucamamarca – streets with colonial style houses and handcraft fair. The best is the view of the colorful mountain around the city. From there we headed to Tilcara where we visit the ruins, Pucara, and the ¨Museo Arqueológico¨. Pucara was constructed by the excavations done in the area. Among the stone walls grows lots of cactus.

Our next stop was Humahuaca. The city has a great monument in the honor of the aboriginal hero of independence, Diego. There are some handcraft shops and restaurants. Here one can see great indigenous traces on peolple and, for being near by the Bolivian border, the influence of its culture.

The way back, we stop in Uquia to visit a small church with paintings and golden objects. We also stop to see the famous ¨Cerro de las siete colores¨, a mountain with different color stripes.

I left at 9am to a tour in Tiahuanaco. In the way we stopped in the small city called Laja to visit the Baroque Mestizo style church. This was created to commemorate the victory of the Spaniard on the Incas. On the left side, there are Inca symbols as the condor, while on the right there are catholic symbols. The visit the Tiahuanaco starts in the local museum that shows indigenous objects from the region. We learned a little about the pre-Colombian cultures and went for a walk in the ruins.

Tiahuanaco was perhaps the most important culture in Bolivia. It was divided in 5 phases, the first it is believed it appeared 10 centuries before Christ, while that fifth it finished around 1200 DC. After this time the Incas arrived in the region and they took care of the temples. Popular legends say that Viracocha (the greatest God, creator of the world) lived there...

I was in Cuzco, walking in to an agency to know the price of a bus ticket to Arequipa when the woman told me not to get in and walk out the store. Outside she told me it was happening an earthquake. I haven’t felt it, only when she said, I realized the walls were moving. There was music in the streets and people were dancing to commemorate Inti Rayme, they were not feeling the trembler.

After a few days I want to Arequipa. The bus trip takes 12 hours. The road that is usually awful, after the earthquake was even worse. The bus was full, children were sleeping on the aisle and a woman by my side was throwing up the whole trip. At this time I was thinking if it was really worthwhile to visit Arequipa.

The answer was yes. The city is beautiful, almost all constructed with volcanic white rocks called “sillar”. The colonial architecture of the buildings, arches, churches are a reason to go there. Another is the climate...